This application claims the benefit of Korean Application No. 98-16182, filed May 6, 1998, in the Korean Patent Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lossless encoding and decoding system, and method therefor, and more particularly, to a lossless encoding and decoding system including a lossless encoding apparatus and a lossless decoding apparatus in which encoded data can be decoded on a real-time basis.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a digital audio signal is obtained from an analog audio signal by means of a pulse code modulation method, in order to represent audio information with the number of channels, the number of bits and a sampling frequency according to DVD-audio standards. However, since a digital audio signal includes redundancy data, it is required to use lossless compression encoding methods, in order to shorten a recording time of a digital audio signal with respect to a digital versatile disc (DVD) and improve a bitrate.
A representative example of lossless compression encoding methods is the Huffman coding method, in which input data having a higher frequency of occurrence is assigned with a relatively shorter length of codeword and input data having a lower frequency of occurrence is assigned with a relatively longer length of codeword. In the case that a digital audio signal is losslessly compressed by the Huffman coding method, it is more efficiently coded than in the case that only a linear pulse code modulation (PCM) method is used.
Meanwhile, a predictor is used in the case that input data has predictable properties. The predictor determines prediction data corresponding to new input data using previous input data, and then uses a method for compressing a difference between the prediction data and the new input data. In the case that such a predictor is additionally used in the above-described lossless compression unit, an encoding efficiency with respect to the digital audio signal can be further enhanced.
When the above-described conventional lossless encoding method is used, a bitrate of the encoded data varies according to the degree of the property and randomness of input data, although a bitrate of the input data is constant. Thus, since conventional lossless coding methods require a very large capacity of buffers, in the case of data compression and decompression, it is difficult to encode or decode data in real-time. In addition, although a buffer capacity is increased in order to solve the above problem, a delay in decoding still remains.
To solve the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a lossless encoding apparatus for encoding data on a real-time basis.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a lossless decoding apparatus for decoding encoded data on a real-time basis.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a lossless encoding and decoding system having a lossless encoding apparatus and a lossless decoding apparatus in which encoded data can be decoded on a real-time basis.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
To accomplish the above and other objects of the present invention, there is provided a lossless encoding apparatus for encoding input audio, data, comprising an input buffer to store the input audio data; a lossless compression unit to losslessly compression encode the audio data stored in the input buffer in units of predetermined data and output the encoded audio data in sequence; an output buffer to store the encoded audio data output from the lossless compression unit; and a bitrate controller to distinguish each predetermined data unit of the encoded audio data stored in the output buffer as first data having a data amount exceeding a maximum bitrate or second data having a data amount less than the maximum bitrate, dividing the first data into third data being the encoded audio data having a data amount of the maximum bitrate and fourth data being the encoded data of a portion of the first data exceeding the maximum bitrate, and control the output buffer so that the fourth data is output together with the second data from the output buffer.
To further accomplish the above and other objects of the present invention, there is provided a lossless decoding apparatus to decode input data to restore audio data, comprising an input buffer to store the input audio data and maintain an input sequence thereof; a lossless restorer to losslessly restore the input audio data output from the input buffer, to generate the restored audio data; a buffer controller to control the input buffer, so that first data having no identification information among the input audio data stored in the input buffer is supplied to the lossless restorer and second data having identification information is combined with third data having the same identification information and supplied to the lossless restorer, wherein the first data has a data amount by which a result obtained by lossless encoding of the input audio data of a predetermined data unit does not exceed a maximum bitrate, and the second data and third data form fourth data by which a result obtained by lossless encoding of the input audio data of a same predetermined data unit exceeds the maximum bitrate, and wherein the second data is encoded audio data having a data amount of the maximum bitrate among the fourth data and the third data is encoded audio data of the portion exceeding the maximum bitrate among the fourth data; and an output buffer to store and output the restored audio data generated in the lossless restorer.
To still further accomplish the above and other objects of the present invention, there is provided a lossless encoding and decoding system for encoding and decoding input audio data, comprising a lossless encoding apparatus comprising a first input buffer to store the input audio data, a lossless compression unit to losslessly compression encode the audio data stored in the first input buffer in units of predetermined data and output the encoded audio data in sequence, a first output buffer to store the encoded audio data output from the lossless compression unit, and a bitrate controller to distinguish each predetermined data unit of the encoded audio data stored in the output buffer as first data having a data amount exceeding a maximum bitrate or second data having a data amount less than the maximum bitrate, dividing the first data into third data being the encoded audio data having a data amount of the maximum bitrate and fourth data being the encoded data of a portion of the first data exceeding the maximum bitrate, add identification information to the third data and fourth data to indicate which of the third data and fourth data are from the same predetermined data units, and control the first output buffer so that the fourth data is output together with the second data from the first buffer, and the second through fourth data are output as a bitstream, and a lossless decoding apparatus comprising a second input buffer to store the bitstream in a same input sequence thereof, a lossless restorer to losslessly restore the bitstream output from the second input buffer, generate the input audio data, a buffer controller to control the second input buffer so that the second data having no identification information among the data stored in the second input buffer is supplied to the lossless restorer and the third data and fourth data having the same identification information are combined and supplied to the lossless restorer, a second output buffer to store and output the restored input audio data generated in the lossless restorer.